Harry Potter and the Secret Nurse

Chapter Thirty Two
The Time Turner Incident

The tiny four year old boy cried and squealed as he tried to wrestle himself from his Aunt’s grip.

\"Please! Don\'t make me sleep in there. I\'m frightened!\" he begged and bawled.

\"You\'re too big to sleep upstairs in the nursery,\" said the Aunt, \"You heard your cousin. He needs the room to put all his toys in to make room for all the birthday presents he got last week. There\'s hardly any place to walk in his bedroom anymore.\"

\"Don\'t lock me in there! Please, what if I need to use the bathroom?\"

\"There\'s a pot at the foot of the bed, just go in there,\" said the Aunt as she unlatched the door underneath the stairs.

Again and again, the tiny child with messy dark hair and glasses cried it was dark underneath the stairs and he was afraid to be locked in there all alone. This was by far, the worst birthday present Harry Potter ever received. Aunt Petunia lifted him up off his feet and flung him into the closet where he landed on the small mattress that crammed right up against the walls on all sides of closet. With his face drenched in tears of despair and utter misery, Harry held his hand out and begged Aunt Petunia not to lock the door to the closet. He said he wouldn\'t wander around the house at night, he promised to do all sorts of chores unlikely for a four year old boy to accomplish if she just left the door unlocked. For a fleeting moment, Petunia had just a trace of a look of pity on her face, which was quickly replaced by a look of disgust and she slammed the door shut, then with a deft click-clack latched the bolt upon it.
There was a brass vent on the door to provide some air into the closet so Harry wouldn\'t suffocate. Aunt Petunia looked through the vent at the miserable little boy she shut inside and waited for it. Harry sat on the mattress, crying as any little boy would, then he started to wail out loud. Petunia clamped the brass vent shut so she wouldn\'t have to listen to Harry cry so loudly. On her way up the stairs Uncle Vernon could be heard calling out for Harry to clam up or he wouldn\'t have any meals for a fortnight.
Harry couldn\'t even bring himself to lift his head to see the chamber pot (actually a discarded roast pot) at the foot of the bed, as it lay in total darkness. Reluctantly Harry lifted his head and wondered how on Earth could he be expected to pee in it. The smell by morning, in such a closed space, would just be unbearable. With fear so paralyzing he could barely even move, Harry looked into the dark end of the closet, and saw a girl looking back at him. She looked his own age with scary shags of wild hair, yet what he could make of her face from the light coming through the cracks in the door, she was as beautiful as an angel. An angel with silly buck teeth.

\"Who are you?\" Harry asked.

\"You know who I am, Harry,\" she said.

Then, something came over his mind, like realizing he was in a dream, right away he knew this was not right.

\"HERMIONE!\"

Hermione lunged forward and shushed Harry\'s mouth. Her tiny hands carried her smell that was so familiar to him, yet so totally off as she was just a 4 year old child in flowery pajamas.

\"Hermione, what are we doing here?\" asked Harry.

\"They\'re screwing with the timeline,\" said Hermione, \"Death Eaters broke into the same department of the ministry I got that Time Turner from in the third year, remember?\"

Harry had to sit for a moment and let the next decade of his life come back to his consciousness. It was a little slow, but he was getting it. Like gathering marbles dropped on the floor, Harry was getting his memory back piece by piece.

\"They\'re... trying to... change history?\" asked Harry.

\"It won\'t work,\" said Hermione, \"Every time someone tries to alter history this way it always fails.\"

\"How come we\'re the only ones who can remember our lives in the future?\" asked Harry.

\"It has something to do with being a wizard, I don\'t know,\" said Hermione, \"Or maybe it has something to do with you being the target. Maybe it\'s how time protects cosality, who knows? When I figured it out this morning I made my way here disguised as a Goblin in robes on the Knight Bus.\"

\"What are they trying to do?\" asked Harry.

\"I\'m convinced it has something to do with Dumbledore\'s spell,\" said Hermione, \"The one he used to protect you from Death Eaters while you were growing up. They\'re going to try to get by that spell tonight.\"

\"How?\"

\"There\'s something significant about this moment in time that may have caused the spell to fail for just this one night,\" said Hermione.

\"That\'s not possible,\" said Harry, \"Dumbledore told me himself, in our... fifth year, right at the end. He said the spell worked because Petunia took me in. It was an act of love that made the spell work.\"

\"Love made the spell work,\" said Hermione, \"But a lack of it can make it go away. Right now, when Petunia locked you in the closet, is the most horrible thing the Dursleys ever did to you. Making you sleep in this closet. Maybe it didn\'t destroy the spell, but at this moment it must be at its weakest. It could be that the Death Eaters think it may be weak enough to defeat it, if they have a general idea where you live. The ministry knows you live on Privet Drive. That information could have been leaked to Death Eaters who stole a Time Turner and are out there right now looking for you.\"

\"What do we do?\" asked Harry.

Hermione looked at Harry for a moment and said, \"I love you, Harry.\"

She took his little hand and held it for a moment. A bit of shock overcame Harry as he remembered his relationship with Hermione.

\"It doesn\'t matter who loves you, here, just as long as you are,\" said Hermione.

After holding hands for a while, and Hermione unbrokenly looked into Harry\'s eyes, she then looked around the wretched little room they were locked in.

\"You really slept here for seven years?\" asked Hermione.

Harry felt the tears of frustration of a four year of child welling up on him again, he just didn\'t want to face it.

\"Harry, you really need to be held,\" said Hermione.

\"No argument there,\" said Harry.

Hermione pushed Harry back on the mattress and tickled him up a little, then she lay next to him and held him. They laid awake together for a while with Hermione\'s arms around Harry. Consoling him, comforting him, letting him know that he was loved. It would utterly defeat the Death Eaters looking for him out in the street. Suddenly Vernon Dursley\'s voice could be heard bellowing from upstairs.

\"Who are those bloody hooligans out in the street? CLEAR OFF YOU YABOS BEFORE I CALL THE COPS!\"

Vernon shooed them off. There was just no reason for them to be around, they would never find anything. Wondering if they would just resort to blowing up the entire street, Hermione held Harry tensely for a moment, but nothing happened.

\"Harry, do you remember your first night being locked up in here?\" asked Hermione.

\"I... no I don\'t!\" said Harry, \"I don\'t remember going in. I don\'t remember Petunia locking the door. I remember... an angel came I always thought later was an imaginary friend. I fell in love with her. But I always thought it was something my mind made up to help me cope. My god, Hermione, that was YOU.\"

\"Pre-destined paradox,\" said Hermione, \"It\'s just like the time we rescued your Godfather. All of this was meant to happen. When the Death Eaters return back to the present, everything should go back to normal for us.\"

\"But Hermione, me, the little me, I mean, will I remember you?\" asked Harry, \"That angel I fell in love with was a great source of comfort me as a child. I actually looked forward to going to bed so I could think about her, holding me like you are now.\"

\"You will,\" said Hermione, \"With a little help.\"

Hermione pulled the small pewter figure of a robust female angel from a pocket in her pajamas and added it to the collection of Harry\'s knights and medieval characters he kept on a shelf above his head.

\"Oh,\" said Harry, \"I always wondered where that came from.\"

Hermione looked at the figures and could just make out the box they came in.

\"Corbin?\" asked Hermione.

\"Corbin Knights,\" said Harry, \"Dudley hated them. He said they were boring so I got to keep them. I always liked them.\"

Harry turned on his side facing away from Hermione as she held him from behind. This was the way he always remembered he was being held by that \"imaginary friend\". He had no trouble at all in falling asleep. Hermione took off his glasses and looked into the child\'s face of the young man she fell in love with.

\"You were really cute, Harry,\" said Hermione and she kissed his cheek.

She heard the door unlatch and a little rap came from it. It was time for her to go.

The next morning, Harry woke up in the boys dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. He believed he had just woken up from a very long dream that made him feel like he had been gone for months. The morning doldrums went away as soon as he caught up with Hermione in the common room and they headed together down to eat breakfast. Ron had run ahead to meet up with Luna as he was doing every day now. Harry and Hermione enjoyed their time to themselves. Together they cheerfully ate breakfast looking forward to some of the day\'s studies.
While chewing on his eggs and bacon, a strange pause came over Harry. A glance at Hermione showed she was feeling the same way. For a moment they just looked at each other as something swimming in the deep subconscious of their minds slowly bubbled its way to the surface.

\"Corbin?\" asked Harry.

\"CORBIN KNIGHTS!\" Hermione shouted.

The whole missing history of the pre-destined paradox hit their woken minds all at once like a bucket of cold water. Little Colin Creavey, sitting with his girlfriend from Ravenclaw, tried to call out to Hermione and asked if she collected Corbin Knights as he had a collection himself. Hermione didn\'t pay attention to Colin and she pulled Harry back down into his seat as he was about to take off to see Dumbledore.

\"We\'ve got to tell someone,\" said Harry.

\"Dumbledore knows, Harry,\" said Hermione, \"He\'s the one who brought me home when it was over last night. The Death Eaters were caught. I thought it was all a dream until a second ago.\"

Openly Hermione put her arm around Harry, not caring that the girls from Slytherin would leer at her for being so openly affectionate towards him.

\"Harry, you really need to be held,\" said Hermione, \"Pretty badly.\"

\"You keep saying that,\" said Harry, \"I told you, I\'m not going to argue.\"

\"Let\'s skive off muggle studies,\" said Hermione as she jauntily chewed on a bit of bacon, \"You know more about computers than the teacher anyway. I want to take you to the top of that big hill facing the lake and play kissy face for a while. You think that will cheer you up?\"

\"Yes, I think it would,\" said Harry as he shook his head whole heartedly.